Performance management systems have become a key component of contemporary public administration. However, there has been only limited analysis of the social construction of performance by public managers who are subject to them. This article examines the ways in which public managers create, maintain, and disrupt performance management practices. The authors find that managers make external performance assessments perform for themselves by constantly negotiating boundaries in ways that combine bureaucratic and managerial rationales. The authors argue that the ways in which organizational boundaries are constructed are fundamental to understanding the success or failure of performance management systems and the transformation of managerial ways of thinking about performance into a logic of improvement through which contemporary public sector reforms become embedded. Practitioner Points• Public managers can use external performance assessments as catalysts to bring about organizational change.• External performance assessments can be used by public managers to increase their influence over frontline services. • Representative bodies can shape external performance assessment frameworks to the benefit of their members if they engage early in the design process. • National policy makers need to pay more attention to the role that public managers play in determining the effectiveness of external performance assessments.

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This article engages with recent debates which assert that community participation and empowerment are place‐contingent. The particular nature of localities has regularly been taken to account for success or failure in processes of participation and regeneration. In contrast, this article exposes the failings based in the nature of the process of regeneration in the complex intersection of national agendas of community participation, regional objectives of economic growth and local aspirations of social cohesion and improved amenities. These agendas meet in the seemingly mutual pursuit of the ‘active community’. They become manifest in the micro‐politics of negotiating and enacting different constructions of community by the different actors ‘empowered’ in the regeneration process: regional development agencies, local government and local civil society. The article is based on ethnographic research in the Kent coalfield. The coalfields as distinct places have commanded a lasting place in the academic and policy literature: romanticized as the epitome of ‘communityness’ but demonized as the site of problem groups. This otherness has outlasted the industry the communities were built on. The analysis here shows that the social organization of regeneration in an arguably ‘different’ place is less driven by local specificities than by a failure to make visible conflicting constructions of community; therefore both the pathologizing of disadvantaged social groups and calls for more ‘community’ in policy delivery rather than policy reform are called into question.

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This article provides an analysis of the uneven practices and outcomes of new developmentalism in Brazil. New developmentalism has been described as a hybrid approach to development. It combines liberal practices of privatization and export orientation with state intervention to achieve social inclusion and economic development. Academic and policy literatures have repeatedly debated the conditions under which development takes place and have particularly focused on the role of the state. So far, discussions have predominantly concentrated on economic developments. We focus on the trajectories of new developmentalism in three strategic sectors in the Brazilian economy: oil, mining and steel, with particular emphasis on the steel industry. We contribute to the debate by paying equal attention to economic and social outcomes in these three sectors. We conclude that new developmentalism is sectorally specific. In the extractive sectors, export competitiveness translates into high wages. In steel, in contrast, new developmentalism brings economic benefits to some but social benefits to few. Thus it is a paradigm of development but it is not wholly developmental.

In this paper we argue that efforts to apply Varieties of Capitalism to emerging economies can retaining a central role for institutions as constraining, it is important to incorporate into the analysis the nature and role of social blocs and the development of growth regimes. The paper develops a framework that systematically explores the links and interactions between institutions, the politics of social blocs and the viability of growth regimes as a way of understanding the trajectory of varieties of capitalism. We illustrate the value of this framework by applying it to developments in Brazil over the last three decades. In our concluding section, we describe how the application of the framework can be broadened not just to other emerging economies but also to the challenges currently being faced by advanced capitalist democracies.We identify a series of research questions developing and applying insights from this framework.A theoretically renewed comparative capitalisms approach to emerging economies is therefore potentially going to provide a payoff to developing a global perspective on forms of capitalism and their trajectories.

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Purpose Drawing on the service-dominant logic and taking a multi-stakeholder brand value co-creation perspective, this paper aims to investigate whether positioning a place brand around sustainability helps or hinders stakeholders’ ability to co-create value for themselves and the brand. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on a case study of Bristol’s city branding following its award of European Green Capital, drawing on 29 in-depth interviews with key informants from multiple stakeholder groups. These interviews are supported by secondary material and field observations. Findings The findings evidence a “tale of two cities”. When sustainability is used as a positioning device, tensions are identified across three elements of brand co-creation: brand meanings; extraordinary versus mundane brand performances; and empowerment and disempowerment in branding governance. These tensions create stakeholder experiences of both engagement and estrangement. Research limitations/implications This paper is based on one case study and evaluates face-to-face stakeholder interactions. Future research could access further stakeholders, across multiple cities and also examine their digital engagement. Practical implications Positioning a brand as sustainable (i.e. green) requires strong commitment to other ethical principles in practice. Brand practitioners and marketers may benefit from advancing stakeholders’ everyday brand performances to reduce disillusionment. Originality/value Rallying around virtuous associations, i.e. sustainability, does not in itself facilitate the generation of value for stakeholders and the brand, but instead can illuminate power imbalances and tensions in stakeholder interactions that result in a co-destruction of value.